


Drenched in Your Golden-Limned Light

by ava_jamison



Category: England Series - K. J. Charles, think of England
Genre: Domestic, Feelings, M/M, Overfond, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23755300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ava_jamison/pseuds/ava_jamison
Summary: Archie is not the one who guards his heart. He gives it wholly and completely. Other things, however? Other things take time.
Relationships: Archie Curtis/Daniel da Silva
Comments: 6
Kudos: 48





	Drenched in Your Golden-Limned Light

Archie was reading, albeit a bit awkwardly, stretching to reach and turn the pages with Daniel practically in his arms, but Daniel, selfishly, did not care a whit, and Archie didn’t seem to mind. They were at Archie’s flat, as they usually were, these days, on Archie’s couch, and Daniel was wearing the dressing gown he’d started to hang in Archie’s closet. 

Daniel leaned back, resting against the man, feeling the rise and fall of his chest, surrounded by the scent of him, the strength of his large, well-made body. He closed his eyes and curled toward him, letting his head fall back to rest on Archie’s shoulder, nestling his face in the juncture of throat and collarbone, and sighed. Instinctively, Archie’s arm pulled him closer, even as his broad chest shook gently with a small, quiet huff of a laugh at whatever inane story he was reading. 

“What is it?” Daniel asked, not opening his eyes.

“It’s nothing.” Archie’s right hand soothed up his arm, gentling. Tender, or maybe that was just Daniel’s annoyingly foolish heart that was too tender for its own good these days. Too tender by far, because tonight, Archie was not wearing the glove.

It had been a slow process. 

The very first time he’d taken it off, they had been in the darkness, and for some time after that, it only came off in the darkness. The scar tissue, the missing fingers… the man was a stallion, a perfect specimen of a man, built like a Viking warrior and hung like a prize bull, but the maimed flesh, the mishap, nay, the sabotage that had ended his military career, the loss, his shame—too painful. The one chink in Archie Curtis’ masterful, soldierly psyche. 

At first.

Hell, the first time Daniel had gone to his knees for the man, the black leather glove was the thing he’d leaned into, as it caressed the side of his face, as he swallowed around the man’s ridiculously beautiful, ridiculously generous champion.

But things had… deepened, and changed, despite Daniel’s fears, and trepidations, and downright resistance to letting himself care for a man like Archie, a man so different from him in every way. Christ, apart from the class difference and the difference in race and religion—after all, according to the last secretary he’d argued with at the Home Office, Daniel Da Silva was a queer Dago Jew—and the fact that Archie was a stumbling neophyte to inversion—hell—a man who hadn’t admitted his truths to himself until he was slightly over three decades old. Honestly, the only thing they shared was their work relationship and the fact that they fucked like the songs of angels…Daniel thought about the way his wire spectacles rested on a nightstand on "his" side of the bed. 

Appallingly domestic. 

And yet. He did not move from his spot, only mildly annoyed when Archie jostled him again, with another soft, short snort of amusement. Daniel curled in further toward those wonderful pectoral muscles and opened the first button on Archie’s shirt so that he could get a hand in and run it over the thick blond hair of the man’s chest. “What is it, dear?” he said, much more absorbed in Archie’s luxurious chest hair than anything else.

“It’s nothing,” Archie said again, sounding a bit embarrassed. “It’s not—I’m afraid you’d find it beneath you.”

“Mmm,” Daniel purred, unable to resist the opening. “I’d rather be beneath you.” 

It worked; Archie blushed and laughed lightly at himself. “Damn it, it’s not high literature. But it’s a ripping good yarn, and some of the bits are quite cunning. The man does have a way with words!”

Daniel cracked an eyelid, making sure Archie was still reading LaQuexe’s latest drivel. Archie, of course, was.

“You’ll find it tripe. Uneducated. It’s not modern at all.”

“Next time, I will have you read poetry. Not Gladstone, of course.” 

“I could read yours.”

“Mmm, the newest collection, when it comes out next month. In the meantime, Shakespeare, perhaps.”

“You’ll have to bring a copy.” Archie’s bad hand came up to rub through Daniel’s hair, completely, blessedly unselfconsious as he went back to reading.

Daniel’s damn-fool heart twisted at the touch, and at the thought of his big, muscular gentleman reading sonnets—he’d make him read sonnets, he realized, and something ribboned inside him, gently unfurling, the way it did the first time Archie had picked up Daniel’s volume of poetry and tried to thoughtfully make sense of something that wasn’t fucking Gladstone, wasn't one of Kipling’s ponderous children's verses. 

Archie’s hand through his hair was addictive, and they went on for several minutes like this, Daniel running his palm softly over Archie’s chest, feeling the soft whorls of hair slip through his fingers, and Archie absently petting Daniel’s hair into disarray, before his hand slipped down to the nape of his neck, bare skin on skin, scar tissue and all. Still reading, Archie’s thumb and forefinger, the only digits he had left there, massaged the juncture of Daniel’s neck and shoulder. 

My Viking, Daniel thought. My dear, sweet Viking. He breathed in the scent of him, hiding his small smile against Archie’s collarbone. Archie’s hand, almost without seeming to, slipped under the silk of Daniel’s dressing gown, trailing up and down Daniel’s bare arm, shoulder to elbow, and then, even as Archie still read, pulled him closer.


End file.
